Julia Roberts does not subscribe to the social-media school of celebrity mothering—sharing Instagrams of her children’s birthday parties, Snapchatting the kids’ soccer games, or crowdsourcing home cold remedies on Twitter. She is a movie star of a more innocent era, who goes to great lengths to safeguard the privacy of her family members—husband Danny Moder and children, twins Hazel and Phinnaeus, 12, and Henry Daniel, 9. But in a new interview, Roberts gives a rare bit of insight into her personal life, revealing that she is holding onto one piece of iconic Hollywood memorabilia for her daughter.
Said artifact: the black Valentino gown, with white piping, that Roberts wore to accept her 2001 Oscar for Erin Brockovich.
“It’s under my bed, in a box,” Roberts tells People. “I have this little space in my house that my husband refers to as the heritage collection. Things I go, ‘I can’t get rid of [this], what about Hazel?’”
Although Moder often tells Roberts that their daughter might want to wear “her own stuff,” Roberts can’t part with the dress: “I say, ‘Well, maybe she’ll want it.’ So I keep keeping things.”
For those unfamiliar with said dress, know that the gown is so iconic that it has its very own Wikipedia page and looked so stunning on Roberts that Valentino himself called the fashion moment the high point of his career.
“I have dressed so many people but I have to be sincere,” the designer told The New Yorker in 2007. “The person that made me feel so very, very happy was Julia Roberts. When she got the Academy Award for Erin Brockovich I watched it on television and really I was so excited that she appeared in my dress.” (Indeed, the designer was so thrilled that he sent her a truckload of red roses the next day.)
Roberts also teased her children’s interests these days, telling People, “Probably Finn is the most fashion-oriented . . . Hazel has just a natural style and Henry has a real, kind of athletic style.”
As for their personalities, Roberts says, “They all have a very keen sense of humor. They all have a sort of different style of humor, but I do think they are all pretty funny, and I really hope they get that from me because that’s what I tell everybody.”
While speaking to Vanity Fair for her 2012 cover story, Roberts revealed that she subscribes to the low-key Meryl Streep school of celebrity mothering, having quizzed the actress’s daughter Grace Gummer about growing up the offspring of a superstar. She also shared an adorable story about her son underplaying her movie-star wattage.
Describing a day walking down a crowded street in Toronto with her family, Roberts remembered, “Somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘Oh, that’s Julia Roberts.’”
“We all just kind of kept going,” Roberts continued, “and then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson.’ That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”
To read the complete cover story, click here.
